Collaborative environments are becoming increasingly popular as users demand greater access to and interaction with shared content, such as word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and the like. In particular, collaborative environments can provide multiple users access to shared content for a variety of purposes, such as retrieving, viewing, editing, and commenting on the content. In order to facilitate greater access to shared content, the content may be hosted on a central database coupled to a World Wide Web (“web”) server. In this way, a user can access the content through a web browser, for example, on any suitable computing device and at remote locations.
Upon receiving a request from the web browser, a web server may be operative to provide a user interface, which is displayed on a user's monitor, enabling the user to access the content stored in the database. Organizing and displaying the shared content in a way that is conducive to productive interaction with the content is a significant challenge for user interface developers. For example, the database may store multiple documents, each of which is associated with different metadata generated by the users sharing the documents. In this regard, the user interface may be designed such that users can retrieve, view, edit, and interact with not only the documents but also with the associated metadata in an effective manner. However, solutions for effectively interacting with documents and associated metadata do not currently exist.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the disclosure made herein is presented.